


A Ribbon Comes Untied

by Anonymous



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, [Jin Kusanagi voice] it's the trauma, this is noooot a Lightning-positive one, uhhh maybe slight warning for mentions of nausea?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-24 05:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20700434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: But he remembers remembering, and when he does he feels sick to his stomach, and that's enough.





	A Ribbon Comes Untied

Waking up shaking, terrified, a fresh wave of nausea burning in his gut, the vaguest traces of a nightmare lingering as the panic keeps him unable to move, for fear of... something.

It isn't concrete, and that in itself is an open window for doubt.

_I shouldn't be acting this way._

_I don't even remember it._

But he remembers remembering, and when he does he feels sick to his stomach, and that's enough.

Actually talking about it isn't worth it; in clarity, there's a realization that if he bothered explaining that everything isn't just like that, all gone, that he might be kept there even longer, and that in itself is painful; he doesn't want to be here, with so many of his worst memories now being the echoes he remembers Here, continued stay will only wrap him up in a blanket of those memories of shaking and bile rising in his throat, he thinks.

He can't talk about it.

He won't go back.

He refuses.

He wishes he could tell his brother-

...he can't.

In dreams, he feels a satisfaction at the fact that that one is dead. He remembers. He remembers the gloating, he remembers it gloating about what he went through. Sometimes, in dreams, a stage is set;

a statuary garden, the geodesic domes of greenhouses, glass foggy with condensation, one after the other stretching to the horizon, grooves in stonework where rainwater congeals with algae. The mosaic of images beneath his feet a shifting labyrinth, the edges and corners formatting and reformatting, the flicker of ocean life replaced with a roiling river and back again.

That One's statue. Some of the rest, there too, in the center of this. The man his brother talked about being responsible for him being trapped there with that thing, one of him too.

... In his hand, a bat.

It's catharsis, the visages smashing, shattering to pieces, reforming, shattering to pieces, again and again and again and again, until there is nothing but rubble, his head swimming in a mixture of confusion and relief, the head of plain white marble shattering to pieces-

... He gets overzealous, maybe, but the dream is the only one that gives comfort.

He doesn't talk about his dreams to Shouichi. From what is said, the rest of those things were allies. He knows, but the fact remains that every night he shouts, screams, curses, laments, pleads with the forces above as he destroys those hated faces.

The half-memories of nearly crushing one of Them in his hands is something he engraves and re-engraves, envisioning That One again and again and again and-

... He can't talk about this to Shouichi.

He can't talk about this to his brother.

So he sits at the table, he goes to school, he tries to smile. Act normal.

That's all he can do.

He hopes that this time, it’s not a trick being played on him.

**Author's Note:**

> me *handshake* Jin Kusanagi  
doubting the world is real due to the shit we've been through and having hyperviolent abstractions of taking violent vengeance against the people who caused our trauma, usually in the form of beating up inorganic representations of them in dreams/nightmares  
I did not have the spoons to do a full thing but  
and no, I'm not... a fan of Lightning considering the shit he said about messing with the vr shit, and legitimately doubt Jin would be either. Sorry.  
Posted anonymously because this is super unpolished even for me. whoops.  



End file.
